#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Butter to The Signature of All Things

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is Butter by Asako Yuzuki. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but the blurb tells me it’s about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and is inspired by a true story. Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Picking up the dairy theme of the title, my first link is to Milkman by Anna Burns which is set in Belfast during the period in Northern Ireland’s history known as ‘The Troubles’.

These Days by Lucy Caldwell is also set in Belfast but during the Second World War and, in particular, on four days during which the heaviest bombardment by German aircraft took place.

Lucy Caldwell has recently published a short story collection, Openings, as has Kate Atkinson. Normal Rules Don’t Apply consists of eleven interconnected stories.

In North Woods by Daniel Mason the connection that runs through the book is with the woods of the title and the people, animals and insects that inhabit it over the centuries. One of the latter is a ‘lusty beetle’.

The search for a very special beetle is the subject of Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce in which spinster Margery Benson abandons her job as a schoolteacher and sets out on an expedition to prove the existence of the golden beetle of New Caledonia.

New Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert also features an expedition to the South Pacific, this time to Tahiti by fictional nineteenth-century botanist, Alma Whittaker.

My chain has taken me from Japan to Tahiti. Where did your chain take you this month?